The three of us all watched Raven's tiny screen py a video. It showed what seemed to be some type of adult aquatic dinosaur. Since I wasn’t much of a Jurassic Park enthusiast, I was clueless on it’s name. However, that wasn’t very important. Instead the alien creatures around it’s twenty six foot body drew my attention.

  Unsurprisingly, each one was anywhere from eight to ten feet tall, answering the terminal’s height. They had grey and pink skin and looked very humanoid with two arms and legs. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a good look at much else like their faces. During the dissection of whatever the fuck is on their table, they wore suits and masks. Only thing I was able to see were barest amounts of their skin through some odd angles.

  Anyway, they got into cutting that poor creature apart with these ser cutters. Cut through the flesh and bone as if it didn’t even exist. Occasionally they’d say some nonsense in that gibberish nguage of theirs. Their voices were… odd. Like it was there yet not there? Had a mysterious echo effect to it. Sounded nice though.

  Overall, the entire process was interesting as they pulled the creature apart. But in time I got bored so I started searching for videos on my screen. Most were the same as Raven’s, only with different species. Until I came across something a little unique. It featured a lone adult Megalodon slowly swimming through it’s enclosure. Seemed so lonely, yet had an engrained pride in it’s bones.

  A voice echoed through the waters, startling the Megalodon. Came from a loudspeaker, as if announcing something. In just a few moments a small mechanical robot worm slowly swam towards the unaware Megalodon. Wasn't any rger than a human’s hand. Big guy didn’t even register the worm as a threat. Until it slipped inside one of his gills and he started thrashing around.

  After a minute of this, his entire body suddenly exploded! Chunks of flesh, organs, and massive amounts of blood flooded the surrounding water, dyeing it red. All that was left? The same robot worm, completely spotless as it silently floated there. A couple moments passed before it started transforming, becoming far rger than previously. Took only ten seconds for the worm to finish, now an exact replica of the Megalodon.

  “Wow.” All I could utter. It was a legitimate perfect copy, even matching it’s mannerisms to the letter as it started swimming around. Reminds me of a Mimic.

  “What was that?” Athena, chin still on my shoulder, spoke up curiously.

  “How am I meant to know?” She didn’t like my response. Or maybe it was the attitude I gave with it. A low growl came from the back of her throat as she softly bit into my neck. Strange, I can feel my blood rushing towards the bottom part of my body.

  “Stop it you asshole.” I flicked her in the forehead, but my words just invigorated her on further. So I chose a method of dealing with almost anything. Ignore it and hope it goes away.

  “You done sweetie?” I asked my adorable Raven, who tilted her head cutely at me. That a yes? A no? A maybe so?

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” There was still more to explore with the terminal, but we can come back ter. Annoyed at my ck of attention, Athena thankfully let go and snorted.

  Together, we three kept walking down this section of the building, coming across most of what we’ve already seen. Empty enclosures and terrariums, sometimes having an old ass bone here or there. They look like they’ll turn to dust with but a touch. Time has not been kind to these creatures. Thought this would continue, but then we found something.

  Inside of a normal enclosure and still floating around aimlessly, was a fish. Only about four feet in length and had some resembnce to a salmon. Could’ve been an earlier ancestor or some shit. However, the most troubling question is how is this thing still alive? Only likely conclusion is that this fish, was in fact, a robot worm.

  “Is there some way to get inside?” I muttered to myself, looking all around the enclosure. There was a hatch at the top and a much rger one at the bottom. Unfortunately, there was no way from where we currently were.

  Time for Pn B then. When brains inevitably fail, one can always turn to brawn and use violence. Oh! A teachable moment! I picked up Raven and held her in my left arm.

  “Whenever you can’t figure something out, you know what you can do? The true and tried method that always works?” She tilted her head at me with confusion. Speaking is above her right now, but I knew my smart spider could hear and understand me. She’s just that awesome. Must be the good genes she inherited from me.

  “Use violence! Kick the living shit out of whatever problem you have!” As I raised my right hand above my head, she giggled cutely and copied me.

  I punched out with that same hand, intending to break the gss. To our surprise, the shit didn’t even crack. The fish inside became startled and swam around chaotically as the water was thrown about. The material used to make this gss is some high end stuff. That punch was enough to shatter a building to pebbles.

  “When in doubt, do it twice.” And so I did, this time with some true power. The gss broke apart and drowned us in water, though it wasn’t a lot. The poor fish was swept by the tide, but luckily grabbed by me just in time.

  Before I could even say a word, a loud arm sounded out followed by an alien voice. From the nearby walls and ceiling, robots of varying sizes and designs came out and immediately started repairing the gss. These little guys did good work and finished within just a few minutes. After they were done, the arm shut off and they went back from whence they came.

  But one of them looked at me in the eyes with a scary amount of intelligence. Made some beeping noise, almost as if telling me off.

  “That so? Well how about you shut the fuck up or I’ll turn you into scrap." It waved one of it’s ‘arms’ and casually went inside the wall, totally unconcerned. What a snarky shithead. While Raven loved my dispy of badassary, Athena wasn’t very impressed.

  “What?” She smiled and chuckled deeply, shaking her head from side to side.

  “Nothing. Must feel real big and strong fearlessly standing up to something one percent your size. Good work.” My eyes narrowed. Oh a reckoning is coming for you, just you wait. But I won’t spoil the surprise.

  Instead I looked at the still squirming fish in my hand. Tried desperately to escape and even acted as though it was truly drowning. Using my fingers, I sent tendrils inside and inspected it. Like I thought, it was one of those worm robot things. It truly and fully became the fish in every way. Even developed blood and it’s own organs, including reproductive ones. No wonder I saw tiny bones inside this thing’s rebuilt enclosure. It actually had kids.

  “What’s so interesting about this thing anyway?” Athena asked, looking it over with her beautiful eyes. After expining it to her, she became confused.

  “How can metal have children?” I couldn’t answer her and simply shrugged my shoulders. Suddenly, Raven got my attention and reached for the fish.

  “You wanna py with it darling?” Handing it over, I watched lovingly as she inspected it herself. Ah, the joys of parenthood and raising-

  Oh, she ripped it apart with her legs. Really lives up to her insect nature with how cold she is. Once she ruthlessly tore it to pieces, she used her many legs to carefully pull out it’s organs and give them a little nibble. But then her face scrunched adorably in disgust and tossed the fish’s corpse away. She looked my way pitifully, causing me to smile as I cleaned her up. Golly, those smushed up cheeks are just the cutest.

  “That’s why you don’t eat random things Raven.” After she was almost spotless, we walked away from this pce.

  However, we didn’t see anything interesting and looped back to the main hall. There we found the gang all waiting for us.

  “The fuck was that arm? Did you hit something?” Lily questioned me with a raised eyebrow.

  “How did you know?” Both she and Alice giggled as the tter expined.

  “We could feel the vibrations throughout the whole building. What’d you do?” And so once again, I expined the whole process, including the robot who told me off. I directly ignored Lily’s obnoxious ugh and focused on the interested Alice.

  “You know, I actually saw something like that too. Except it was much rger and I didn’t break the gss.” Lily wiped away a tear and did the same for Dante who ughed with her, though I could tell he had no idea what they were ughing about.

  “Same here. Didn’t think much of it and moved on.”

  Since our experiences were all the same, seems this pce was used to house lifeforms and conduct all kinds of nasty experiments on them. Then what about the other buildings? To answer this question, we soon left and returned to the open waters. The second building we entered had a simir design, yet different yout as opposed to the first one.

  Immediately, one could spot the clear as day difference. This entire pce was absolutely chock full of weapons. Even the cleaning robots looked warlike in their own way.

  “Stay close to me. And don’t touch anything.” I walked in the front as we explored together. Alice smiled lovingly and lightly bumped into my shoulder with her own.

  “What a gentlemen. Going first to protect us.” She always knows how to tickle my emotions. After she handed Elizabeth over to daddy like some kind of merchandise, we continued on our way.

  Instead of numerous hallways, it mainly featured these extremely rge areas packed with floating gss containers. Inside of those containers were a variety of devices and gadgets. Some didn’t look anything like a weapon but a few were highly advanced guns. Rifles, pistols, a strangely designed rocket uncher I think?

  Thankfully there were a few terminals here which had videos demonstrating them. And holy hell are some of these bastards deadly. Saw one where it legitimately disintegrated an entire pack of dinosaur looking things in the span of three seconds. It was this small orb the size of my hand which fired a yellow ser. Seemed as though it accurately tracked any living beings, yet ignored mechanical ones. I have no delusions that I could survive that. Maybe I can tank a blow, or even two. However my fate would definitely be death if more were used.

  But these videos also allowed me to finally see the aliens for the first time. Garbed in this advanced looking white techno suit, they were grey and pink skinned humanoids. Their faces were ft and had the nose of Voldemort. They also had three white cat eyes, all of which were vertical. Strangely, they cked a mouth. Or at the least no visible one anyway. Same with ears and hair. Bald headed bastards.

  Through out exploration of this building and all the others, I’m starting to come to a conclusion as to what they were doing here. These aliens, for whatever reason, were finding out how to kill off biological creatures in the fastest and most absolute way. Sometimes the things they experimented on were species not found on Theia. Especially a few. Looked like insects actually bred specifically for war. Scary ass things give me the shivers.

  The final part of our tour was the giant metal gate with the arch at the top. Not exactly sure what it’s use was, but it might have been some sort of teleporter. Only thing that makes sense to me. Currently though it was obviously depowered. A portion of it was damaged and a couple cables were disconnected. I tried to plug them back in, but it didn’t work. They’d need to be remade from scratch.

  “Luckily, I know who’d be perfect for this job.” Alice gnced at me and whispered to her sister.

  “He means Michael right?” Lily shook her head and sighed.

  “Poor fucker. Barely gets a second of rest before this sadistic asshole dumps more work on him.”

  “Shouldn’t he be given workers comp or something like that? Guy definitely deserves a vacation with that sweet girl.”

  “Sweet girl? How the hell would you know?”

  “We speak occasionally. You should get to know her, she’s pretty fun. And her whole rom com deal with Michael? Fucking adorable!” They didn’t even bother whispering anymore, delving off into a completely different subject now.

  Ignoring them, my eyes wandered around the entire dimly lit area. Something still bugging me is how this pce is even powered. We went through every single building and never found any kind of power source, or anything resembling it. I can't help but wonder though. Why were they so anxious to find out how to kill biological life effectively? And what was that repeating word I found in every terminal?

  “Hey.” A finger poked my cheek, interrupting my thought process. Looking over to my left rewarded me with Athena, her head tilted to the side with familiar eyes.

  “Can we fight when we get back home? And let’s have Dante watch so he can start really learning properly.” I raised an eyebrow.

  "Your tone of voice makes it seem like I’ve already agreed.” She became confused, though I could tell it was fake based on that smile of hers.

  “Aren’t you going to?” I sighed deeply. Almost feels as though these girls have me wrapped around their finger. But that’s not such a bad thing.

  “Yeah yeah, whatever. Let’s leave and get back home already.” We started slowly swimming towards the pce we entered from, the sisters holding their children and gossiping amongst each other.

  When we crossed the threshold, the Submarine Eel suddenly appeared in front of us like magic, startling the children cutely. Turning around, the area returned to it’s dark and bnd wastend. Mostly lifeless, besides those weirdos hiding under the Infested sand.

  .

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  .

  Time had passed quickly since then and now, our stay on our home pnet was almost over. A month ter and the entire world was now Infested with my goop. Only the infected remained and anything healthy had been purged like the inferior bastards they were. Well, besides the Breeding Camp ones of course. The infected still fought across the pnet occasionally and ate each other, but all of them were under my command. Even the Alphas who wanted freedom like the Rat Emperor. I found him to be interesting so I kept him around and allowed him to develop his Rat Swarm.

  I’ve built enough Leviathans for the true fighters of my Horde to funnel into. What I meant by that were the ones who wouldn’t die by a single breath, like the trillions of worthless infected insects I had under me. And at the moment I was directing my generals to their ships.

  “Asura, you’ll take the one on the right.” I pointed towards the city sized tentacled creature. He bowed and nodded all three heads before leaving.

  In front of me were twelve more of those same ships, each one able to effortlessly hold a stable forty million. Could hold more if they squeeze together. In the middle of these was a much bigger Leviathan, twice as rge as a normal one. Obviously, that one was mine. My own Captial Cruiser Css Ship!

  “Godfrey, you’ll take that one right behind Asura.” The giant Behemoth nodded his head and started walking towards it, every step shaking the ground. Did he get taller?

  “Phoenix, that one’s yours. I’ve already pced your fighters inside.” She ignored me entirely and flew off with a massive amount of fir. What a bitch. I'd teach her a lesson, but I kinda like her attitude. Ignoring her I continued.

  “Rat Emperor, right there. Your forces are already loaded up.” He bowed deeply and left. I'm still surprised at how long he was able to survive despite the constant setbacks. Finally was Craxis, who has gotten much stronger since our fight.

  “And you’re in the one right behind me.” But he didn’t move and frowned.

  “Are you sure we’re ready? We only have a few billion who can truly fight.” I understood his concerns since I myself still have them. The enemy we are about to fight vastly outnumbers us and has great technology. Not to mention they beat the virus previously. Though it wasn’t at it’s full potential, that doesn’t mean shit. They still won in the end.

  “Don’t worry, I have a pn.” My eyes turned upward, as if I could see past the stars themselves.

  I knew a fleet was on it’s way to us since I sent a few probes in different directions around Theia. One got back to me, letting me witness their entire prowess. Tens of thousands of high css ships, each one military and outfitted with weapons.

  Though my Leviathans would be able to take on many at a time due to their sheer size difference, we were still outnumbered and outgunned. But that’s where my empowered EMP infected come in. My new intelligence and messing with the alien structures we found gave me some great ideas in improving them. As long as I can knock out their systems for even a brief moment, we win. Once they are all infected, we will truly have the means to fight against the Alliance.

  “We are not the same virus which lost. Mine is better, more effective. My infected have higher potential and strength in comparison to the previous ones.” I gnced at him out of the corner of my eye.

  “Don’t think, and just follow. Understand?” He stared at me for a few moments before nodding his head and silently leaving. Despite the atmosphere he gave off, no disloyal thoughts were in him. He was truly worried about the virus and the infected.

  Shaking my head, I looked to the left of the Leviathans current position. Another pn I made. Smaller biological ships, numbering a few hundred. Each one contained a Tumor Mother and would be sent out into the Gaxy at random. Though they can’t travel far, it was enough to get a good distance. This will make it difficult for the Alliance since they’ll have to spread their forces to deal with the sudden Infestation popping up in a hundred different worlds. And this will increase my Horde's numbers greatly.

  I felt a tugging at my pants, forcing my gaze downward. Who else but my adorable spiderling?

  “Yes sweetheart?” She had grown a decent amount, same with the others. Now they were a quarter of my size. Besides Dante, Elizabeth and Raven should be about my height in the future. The goofball on the other hand will be a good deal taller, probably fifty or so feet.

  Her mouth opened, revealing those sharp fangs of hers. I bent down on one knee and pced my cheek next to her. She’s done such a thing before, opening her mouth and wanting to kiss my cheek. So I didn’t think much of it. But… seconds passed and she still hadn’t done it. I turned and stared into those beady bck eyes.

  “Darling?” A few light gasps came from her, causing some concern to rise up. Is she sick or something? Before I could check, the most amazing thing happened.

  “D-Dadda!”

  Oh! Oh this was it! The first words! Without saying a thing I swept Raven into a hug which she gratefully returned.

  “My smart spiderling! So awesome!" I squeezed her tighter, causing her try and speak again.

  “Dadda!” It was a bit clearer this time, her voice excited. Yet it still carried this frostiness, giving it a unique charm. I swiftly picked her up in my arms.

  “Come on, let’s go show mommy!” My wings unfurled themselves and I leapt into the air, the ground shattering beneath me. With a fp, I broke the sound barrier and flew towards the Facility.